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Palm Springs Recap + Printable Map

That’s right, I finally got around to going through the hundreds of photos we took on vacation in Palm Springs to give you a little recap of what we were up to! I even enlisted the help of one of my favorite Illustrators, Hello Kristen Long, to draw up a map as a free printable guide since I know many of you are headed out to the dessert soon. (Kristen is amazing, and she even draws what she ate for breakfast sometimes on her Instagram account, so definitely go check her out! We all love drawings of food!!)

What are you waiting for? There are plenty of palm trees and gorgeous colors to be seen in this post, so dive right in! You better beware though, you might be begging your family or significant other for a vacation afterwards. I’m already begging mine to go back! Enjoy our little photo story and make sure to download your map at the end!

We stayed at The Saguaro the whole week, which was a tropical rainbow paradise. If you put me in a place with pink and yellow doors, I’m bound to have fun! I already talked about The Saguaro a lot in my previous post, so I’ll keep it short here. I had an amazing time staying here. It felt so nice to be able to sit on the balcony in the morning, look out at the mountains, and drink tea. I was snapchatting the view from our balcony like crazy every time I went out there. So surreal!

On our first day, we went to the Ace Hotel to do some exploring and ate at the restaurant there, Kings Highway. This was probably our favorite place to eat and we went back twice for brunch. I got a BLAT (which is a BLT + avocado) the first time, and skirt steak and eggs the second time; both were delicious! I also tried some of my guy’s avocado toast, and was sad when I had to stop after only one bite. During our whole trip, I think we had avocado at every meal and I was definitely not complaining!

The Ace Hotel has a photobooth in the lobby too, so even if you’re not staying there, stop in and go make some silly faces. Old school photobooth photos are one of my favorite treasures since they are actually a physical memory. And because I can line the refrigerator with them! Ha!

We ended up taking a TON of photos at the Ace. Nobody was around when we went, and I got to freak out about seeing a cactus in the wild for the first time totally free of judgement. And the view of the mountains from the hotel rooms! Let’s talk about those mountains for a second because I am not convinced they are real! They were so perfect I kept talking about how it looked like someone was just holding up a cutout that was just mountain-shaped.

We had rented a car to get from LAX to Palm Springs, so we had a way to get to the Cabazon Dinosaurs, otherwise known as “the giant dinosaurs everyone Instagrams.” (I am totally guilty of Instagramming these now too). This is about 45 minutes outside of Palm Springs but they’re definitely worth seeing, and you won’t miss them when you’re driving on the highway; they’re the only giant dinosaurs in sight!

After seeing the dinosaurs, we explored The Parker. Words can’t describe how beautiful everything is there, it’s like something out of a fairy-tale. We literally got lost in a huge hedge maze for half an hour exploring. And the decor! Jonathan Adler did an amazing job because I wanted to take every part of that hotel, pick it up, and bring it back to my apartment. I mean, look at how gorgeous their restaurant, Norma’s, even is?!

Now on to one of the things I was most excited about: #thatpinkdoor! I even had to plan my outfit beforehand to coordinate with the door. I know, I’m a total loser! If you have a car, or if it’s not 115 degrees Fahrenheit like it was when we went, you can rent a bike from The Saguaro, and drive around the Palm Springs houses. And to make life easier, the address of the pink door house is 1100 E Sierra Way. You’ll thank me for this after you see how easy it is to get lost within those gorgeous streets.

Anddd, here’s the big Palm Springs map reveal! I’m extremely obsessed with it, I already have plans to print it out and frame it as a memory of all of our favorite places. Kristen did an AH-mazing job, don’t forget to check out her other work too!

This post has definitely made me miss vacation as I’m sitting here back in my apartment and looking at the forecast of clouds and rain for New York for the next week. If you’re headed to Palm Springs soon, or want to plan a trip there after seeing how gorgeous it is, don’t forget to take along the Aww Sam + Hello Kristen Long map! You can download it below or click the photo above for the full sized .jpg version!

One last food recap so I can tell you about all of the amazing food we had:

For Breakfast/Brunch:

– King’s Highway had the best avocado toast, BLAT sandwich, and skirt steak and eggs. The skirt steak had some kind of prickly pear cactus sauce on it, which was incredible! We spent half of the time eating the sauce and inspecting it to try to figure out how to re-create it.

– We had room service from El Jefe (which is in The Saguaro hotel) one morning and I had a spicy eggs benedict with chorizo, and I practically licked my plate at the end trying to eat all of the sauce.

– A bunch of you recommended we go to Koffi, which is known for having a really amazing cold brew. I’m not a huge coffee drinker though, and if I do drink coffee it has to be something really sweet, so I had a frozen green tea matcha drink which was super refreshing and reminded me of those delicious matcha kit-kats.

– We went to Cheeky’s once too. Warning: make sure to go early because it was PACKED when we went and had to wait for a while in the 100 degree weather. It wasn’t my favorite of the places we went to. I had a fried chicken sandwich, which maybe wasn’t the right choice, but my guy loved what he got!

– Norma’s in The Parker was one of the more expensive places we went to eat, but it was definitely worth it! They started us out with smoothie shots. Now, any place that gives you a little surprise smoothie is great in my book. I had a smoked salmon eggs benedict with caviar and my guy had the best selling huevos rancheros. Both were great!

For Dinner:

– We went to El Jefe for dinner probably three times because I was addicted to the Carne Asada tacos and guacamole. What can I say, I just really love tacos. I’m still lusting after those tacos now. I can’t find anything like them here in New York.

– If you’re hungry for pizza, definitely go to the Birba. I had a pizza with a fried egg on it. I insisted on having a whole pizza to myself, mostly because I wanted to have leftovers for breakfast the next day.

– Appetito is mostly a pasta restaurant, but I had an amazing pulled pork sandwich that came with a side of pesto pasta. It wasn’t as crowded as some of the other places we went to either, which was a nice change, and it was right next door to Koffi!

I hope you enjoyed our recap! Hopefully we can go on another adventure soon and show you some more beautiful places!